1. Technical Field
This invention is in the technical field of geographic information systems, more specifically those systems involved with geographic names data commonly referred to as “Geonames.”
2. Background
Geographic name data has traditionally been stored in the form of large hard copy editions called gazetteers. The industry has now moved in the direction of databases to allow Web-based access and more usable search features. Geographic names databases contain information, including geographic place names, location coordinates, and any amount of associated feature data and metadata. These forms of databases are compiled and maintained by numerous government bodies including the United States Geological Survey (USGS) for domestic data and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) as well as other agencies and private geographic companies. This data is used for purposes ranging from map production to defense intelligence.
Geonames data storage and retrieval pose a number of unique challenges compared to other types of database information. Proper retrieval often requires knowledge of the exact place name spelling, as well as information about uniquely geographic metadata such as geographic location and feature type. Available database search engines are known for being unforgiving with their search options. For example, a search as simple as “Mexico” may come up with no search results because this place name is stored as “Mexico”. When searches are extended to place names with multiple name parts including a generic feature type, this becomes even more cumbersome. Additionally, there are many place names that are identical without additional location information (e.g., Springfield, Virginia and Springfield, Ill.) or without information regarding feature type (e.g., Potomac River and Potomac, Md.).
Generic geographic feature names (e.g. river, stream, city, road etc.) complicate geographic searches. To retrieve information about a feature of interest, a search engine user would need to know the feature name used in the database (e.g., stream not river) as well as use the correct native language or dialect for this term. Names are generally collected in the native language in Romanized form. While name Romanization nominally follows some sort of standardization, there are multiple systems for Romanization of particular languages (e.g., MOCT or McHune Reicheur for Korean) and more than one standardization body (e.g., the U.S. Board of Geographic Names and the International Board of Geographic Names). This is compounded by human fallibility and judgments that must be made regarding pronunciation.
Like all other parts of language, geographic names and terms evolve. Geographic names are particularly susceptible to change over time because of the political nature of place names. Place names often change with the party or leader in power for reasons of language change or political use (e.g., Istanbul/Constantinople). To properly identify a place, a Geonames database user may need to be able to identify this feature by a historic variant of the name that may be completely different linguistically.